Luke 10:38-42

THE TWO SISTERS

‘Now it came to pass, as they went, that He entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received Him into her house,’ etc.

Luke 10:38

This home of the two sisters is but the type of every Christian home, where Christ is or ought to be a perpetual guest, to be listened to with the inward service of Mary, or worked for with the active service of Martha. Every family is interested in this story, and perhaps needs in different ways its warning.

I. These are days in which activity is glorified.—Religious restlessness is the watchword of our Church. Whether in philanthropic effort or in the organisation of religious worship, much doing, many services, many acts, regular apportionment of time among religious duties, as they are called, is the very order of the day, Marthas abound; men and women cumbered with much doing, distracted with the many calls upon them, unable for the noise and confusion to catch the words which fall from the Divine lips. It is all giving to God, and that other work of receiving from Him is apt to pass undone; the gospel of speaking is practised and preached, the gospel of listening may chance to be forgotten or overlooked. We are getting less and less to understand the glory of the disciple where God is teaching and the learner sits silent at His feet; we are forgetting that to think and muse, ponder and weigh, may be a blessed service; that listening may be that good part which shall not be taken away.

II. Activity may be even as a means of avoiding God, not a means of seeking Him. It is painful to some persons, it must be feared, to be alone with God, and so they hide themselves and shut their ears and eyes by plunging into any occupation that is at hand. Reading seems laudable, but reading is too often an escape from thinking; and I have seen persons often plunge into the detail of religious work who mistrust the voice of God speaking to their own souls. I think I have known those who have taken actively to religious work in the hope that that will somehow create religious belief, but we must not so read the wondrous promise that they who do the will of God shall know of the doctrine, for it is not God’s will that we should seek to know Him by any other means than personal trust, and that other way is not trust in Him—it is trust in ourselves, and in our methods.

III. If we will not sit at home at Jesus’ feet and listen, if we persist only in busying ourselves with our acts and our doings, we shall not be taught of Him. ‘Mary has chosen that good part which shall not be taken from her.’ She had chosen a method of learning wisdom which was independent of earthly change and chance. Our capacity for work may be at any time taken away from us, we may lose it at a stroke by the failure of some power or faculty; at the best, age will come to weaken our energy, to make much service impossible; then, unless we have learned the other service, where should we be?

—Rev. Canon Ainger.

Illustration

‘We recall the touching lines in which John Milton asked himself how he could work for God now that blindness had come upon him—

Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?

he asks; and he comes out from his dim questionings and fears into a region of blessed certainty—

Who …

… bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: …

… thousands at His bidding speed,

And post o’er land and ocean without rest;

They also serve who only stand and wait.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

TRUE SERVICE

Nothing is more striking in the life we are called to follow than the way in which we are taught to serve God. We are called to serve God actively if possible, passively at any rate, but in any case to serve Him.

I. The sanctification of service.—When the disciples and the few apostles, seeing Jesus passing out of their sight into the heavens on His Ascension, they received the message from the angels, ‘Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?’ Mere gazing, mere reading, mere listening, mere dreaming, have never prospered as forms of Christian life; and we can be certain that it was not for anything that could be so named that Mary was commended by the Lord. The law for our spiritual life is, ‘Diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.’ Martha served; Mary sat at His feet; and the Lord by what He said did not put any mark of disapproval on Martha’s serving. Christianity, worthy of all high service, has elevated the very humblest and homeliest into the light of heaven. So be it that it is loyal, free from self-seeking, and rendered as to Christ, all homely service is now touched by Heaven—the kitchen, the nursery, the sewing-room, the market-place, may all be ante-rooms to the house of God. To sweep the stairs, if it be done as Christ’s commandment, that is Divine. It was not because Martha served that the Lord reproved, if He did reprove her.

II. The burden of service.—What brought Martha with her complaint to Jesus was not her sister’s freedom from service and neglect to fulfil her household duties, but just this: ‘She was cumbered with much service.’ It was a temporary entanglement with many things, a confession that she was unable to undertake her tasks. She was cumbered. In the best of service things may be too many for us, or, from the failure of our strength, may seem too many. At any rate it was the burden, the encumbrance, that broke down her patience, and brought her in a moment of weakness to complain to Christ.

III. The one thing needful.—We go on until we are overwhelmed with our much service, until the simplicity of the work undertaken has got covered over with the additions we have made to it. And our heart breaks down, and a moment like Martha’s comes on. We give out our cry, and the Lord replies to it by gently leading us back, out of our self-made burdens, as He led Martha. ‘Dear ones, but one thing is needful in working for Me; give Me your hearts. That is the thing that will not be taken away.’

Illustrations

(1) ‘If we were asked to draw a picture of a beautiful life, I think it should be this—a life of faith in Christ, of communion with Christ, and of devotion to Christ. The ideal Christian combines both Martha and Mary. We may say of both what Wordsworth says of the lark, they were “True to the kindred points of heaven and home.”

Be Martha still in deed and good endeavour,

In faith like Mary, at His Feet for ever.’

(2) ‘If you want to share the happiness of God’s family, if you want to be strong with the strength of God, if you want your home flooded with the inward light which all the clouds of earth cannot darken, if you want your heart thrilled with the inward joy which all the sorrows and disappointments of life cannot mar, if you want your soul thrilled with inward music which all the discord of sin and guilt cannot spoil, yea, if you want your whole life and being governed by the inward peace which neither time, nor death, nor eternity can disturb, make Christ the permanent King … of your home. (Then) the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelf, and even the toys in the nursery, in some way or other remind you that He is there! Every family enjoyment pulsates with His life. Every family duty overflows with His sweetness, and every family custom is brimful of His ideas and teachings. He is in the heart of every conversation, in the soul of every song, in the light of every smile, in the music of every laugh, in the breath of every prayer.’